


Theodicy: Water Burial

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 07:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4555788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rio, Ryouga and IV. The world ends and they're all in Hell.</p><hr/><p>For Tristan, because you light up my life ♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theodicy: Water Burial

**Author's Note:**

> No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians.  
> Desire will not save the morality of God.  
> If he created beings able to choose between good and evil,  
> And they chose, and the world lies in iniquity,  
> Nevertheless, there is pain, and the undeserved torture of creatures,  
> Which would find its explanation only by assuming  
> The existence of an archetypal Paradise  
> And a pre-human downfall so grave  
> That the world of matter received its shape from diabolic power.  
> \-- Theodicy, Czeslaw Milosz (translated by Robert Hass)

Her world ends in water.

Rio is seven and she dreams about drowning and then wakes up to a wetness in her bed and all over the floor and the sound of their family home groaning under the weight of the waves outside. She reaches across the sheets for her brother's hand and doesn't let go.

Their parents must have ushered them out the front door first and into the street swelling with water, but neither of the twins will remember that. They'll remember the force of the waves were so strong that cars were dislodged from their parking places and sent careening down the street and also the way the murky depths hid everything familiar. Rio will remember looking down at what used to be their street and thinking: poor things. She will remember Ryouga crying, too, but he'll deny that later.

But they will move to higher ground and things will get better and most people will forget that there was ever a country beneath the sea.

* * *

Thomas is thirteen when his father dies. No, he is ten when his father dies and thirteen when his father dies again. When he is ten, his father gathers them — brothers, three of them — up and ushers them down the long halls of their house and into a car and kisses them all goodbye and leaves them.

The world has gone mad, they are told and while Chris examines the statement and dissects it and tries to figure out where everything has gone wrong and how to fix it, Thomas thinks in rage. (And Mihael, who so sweetly kept asking where their father was, quickly understands what is needed of him.)

He is eleven when his father returns home, missing half of his face and all of his kindness and he is thirteen when they build their new family home on the bones of their old one.

The joke becomes that their father was first and their father was second and they are III, IV and V.

Two years later, he turns thirteen and their father walks into the ocean and never comes back. But he made them promise: carry my name as you always have.

For V that means emulation. He wears his hair as their father did, in a long side braid, and dresses in his father’s leftover clothes. When he remembers to set the table for dinner (rare), he always leaves a place for their father, set just how he liked it. But all too often he is just as their father was — absent, caring, far too callous after he came back from death.

III exemplifies their father as he remembers him. Kind, with a sweet tooth, fond of ancient mysteries and always willing to defend their home with tooth and nail.

And out of the brothers, IV has the failed expectations. The father they wanted, the father they missed, the father who came and left and the father who never looked at him enough.

“Are you watching?” He asks, takes a bow and carries out his father’s will.

* * *

They’re hungry and tired and wet and the world has ended for a second time for the Kamishiro twins. Heartland was swallowed by the ocean, just as their first home was and while it gets easier each time to lose everything it also carves them into sharper features.

“We need food and shelter,” Rio is practical, she leads them to the only house on the block still standing and Ryouga walks with her but he still has doubts. He doesn’t think she should be this hard and he would like to be better for her, for them, but every time he thinks about it too hard his stomach revolts.

Because he needs to do better, it’s Ryouga who challenges the front door. He pounds on it with his fist and when the door swung open to IV the one to say: “We’re here for your stuff.”

“Since you’re here to praise me, I’ll allow it on a condition.”

A duel. Because IV has swords and because why not and because that is how the story goes, isn’t it?

But it’s Rio who accepts it and they duel in the old fire pit behind the house that used to be used for banquet bonfires. IV makes a big show of the grounds as he leads them back there — this could all be theirs if they win, of course. 

And Rio could have — maybe, should have — won because she took fencing in school and nothing had taken away her skills and she was _desperate_. (And IV was desperate too in a way that Ryouga understood because family was different than survival.) But something goes wrong and maybe it’s the steel in their swords or maybe it was something else — IV is certain it’s the spirit of his father, looking down at him — but the years old ashes stir and ignite.

IV regrets, Ryouga regrets, they all flee the scene. Her world ends in fire.

* * *

He hides Rio with an older couple that has a safehouse, he thinks he can trust them but he can just hear her voice in his head, disappointed, disappointed, where is the brother she would have fought so hard side by side with?

“I’ll come back when she wakes up,” he promises.

“Of course, dear,” the older couple say and Ryouga leaves to the sound of their pity gathering in his ears.

* * *

When they meet again, Ryouga has made a promise to himself that he won’t let Rio down this time so he squares himself to IV and banks on hatred and memories to keep him steady. IV grins and spreads his arms wide and gestures like a performer.

“My friend, my fan, it’s you, again!”

“None of those,” Ryouga replies. And, really, who defines a friend by one terse encounter that ended in blood and tears for all involved? “I’ll pay you back for before.”

“Was the show that unsatisfying? Hah? That part is on you. My performance was perfect.”

And, really, IV won’t mention Rio — won’t talk about her, or even imply her, all of his teeth and words are sent straight to Ryouga.

“So you won’t mind a repeat, then.” But Ryouga is all knives for his sister because he knows what mistake he made before and — it’s easy to understand. In another world, in another time when maybe they hadn’t met the way they did, he wouldn’t hate IV. But that isn’t the world they’re living in and Ryouga has a point to make.

“This encore will leave you breathless!”

It’s not a duel, not the kind that IV and Rio had engaged in. Ryouga steps forward and slams his fist into IV’s face, right into the scar he got from Rio’s sword. Then IV hits him back. Neither of them bother with blocking or dodging and it’s only a few minutes in before they both stumble back and IV is _laughing_ even as blood drips out of his lips and down the front of his white shirt.

“I’m going to make a home for us,” Ryouga says, raises his chin.

“Isn’t that stealing? Well, as long as I’m around I’ll be here to crush your dreams. You’ll be homeless for the rest of your life! You’ve come here asking for an encore of the great myself’s performance and you can’t even accept the opening act!”

IV pushes a little too hard. Ryouga doesn’t push back but swallows everything IV throws at him and comes roaring back, reborn under the pressure of statements that aren’t close to the truth but scare him nonetheless. He hits him and hits him and hits him again until it feels like every punch dislocates his knuckles further and further into his hand and up his arm and there’s nothing left but the feeling of blood and the stuttering rise and fall of IV’s chest that tells him he’s still alive.

He doesn’t flee, this time, but sits down next to IV. He has plans — he can return, get Rio, maybe she’ll have woken up then and the burns on her face and arms and legs will be healed and they can come back to this house and live here. He doesn’t know that there are two other brothers, that it will be another two years before Rio wakes up and that IV, like his father, doesn’t die so easily.

“See you in hell,” IV crackles, sounds like a man drowning on his own blood.

“Dumbass, we’re already here.” Ryouga gets in the last word.


End file.
